"We always knew you were too sweet for your own good."
Note: this post contains mentions of disordered eating behaviors.
I have Type 1 diabetes. I've had it for a couple months -- or, I guess, I've had it all my life and finally became symptomatic enough at the end of July to get a diagnosis. It is a phenomenally lucky thing that this happened at a time in my life when I have a physically undemanding job with reasonably good health insurance, when I am not snowed under by godawful depression, when I have basically no stressors or tensions in my daily life, when I have a steady and reliable income ... in short, a time when I have all the resources and energy one would need to deal with something like this. Also, I have no fear of needles. I would go so far as to say I have a mild fascination with them. (A bonus when so many tanks of gas and bricks of ramen during my college years were funded entirely from plasma donations.) As I told a friend on Grylliade, it's lucky that I was always a goody two-shoes with goody two-shoes friends, because had I had the least access, I would probably be a heroin addict with 37 tattoos by now. Another bonus: I am still enjoying quite the honeymoon period, when your pancreas is still waffling over whether it wants to settle down and take on the family business or run off to San Francisco to start a Peruvian pan flute band, and so I have a sizeable margin of error for keeping things on an even keel. And did I mention the part where I have the best, smartest, most patient, most stable, and handsomest husband I could dream of?
The one real negative in all of this is that it came at a very bad time for me, food-issues wise. I had been attending Overeaters Anonymous to try and deal with my bingeing habits, and I make no comment on the 12-step method in general, but it had been growing into more of a stressor than a help for a few months, and I ended up in the ER with jacked-up vision about a week into a relapse of full-on bingeing and purging. (I have no doubt that without this relapse, which created the perfect storm of conditions, I would have continued undiagnosed for AGES, so it's lucky in its own way.) And boy howdy, did this diagnosis hit every single food-related fear I had. Cue a month of very disordered habits, culminating in a day where I behaved so dangerously that I am still too ashamed to talk about it, followed by a month of getting my shit together and my sugars under control (yay!) while stressing basically nonstop about food (boo!)
Things continue to look up. My therapist, despite (or, if I am being honest, thanks to) his bag of "make you look and feel like an idiot" exercises, has provided a lot of help. A woman at church whose son is diabetic invited us over for dinner sometime.
Anyway, I wanted to mention this for a couple reasons. First, because it is a thing happening in my life, so I should talk about it. I've been very reticent in sharing it with anyone; I'm not sure why. I actually haven't even told my parents yet. Maybe I'm subconsciously hoping it will go away if I don't announce it. In the immortal words of Andy Stitzer, "Well, shit, man, fuck it." I CAN HAZ DIABEETUS. And because of that, and because I am almost 28 and Jesus I am tired of spending all my mental energy on this noise, I am ready to walk away from my food obsessions and convictions, my compulsions and behaviors, the whole comforting, familiar, exhausting rat's nest of it. I am ready to learn how to be sane about food. I am not totally sure what that is supposed to look like, nor what the process to get me there will be, but I am prepared to figure it out.
So to that end, this LJ is probably going to turn into mainly a food diary for awhile, just so you know.
Umm also why has the market not produced this method of blood glucose testing, as a consumer I protest
I have Type 1 diabetes. I've had it for a couple months -- or, I guess, I've had it all my life and finally became symptomatic enough at the end of July to get a diagnosis. It is a phenomenally lucky thing that this happened at a time in my life when I have a physically undemanding job with reasonably good health insurance, when I am not snowed under by godawful depression, when I have basically no stressors or tensions in my daily life, when I have a steady and reliable income ... in short, a time when I have all the resources and energy one would need to deal with something like this. Also, I have no fear of needles. I would go so far as to say I have a mild fascination with them. (A bonus when so many tanks of gas and bricks of ramen during my college years were funded entirely from plasma donations.) As I told a friend on Grylliade, it's lucky that I was always a goody two-shoes with goody two-shoes friends, because had I had the least access, I would probably be a heroin addict with 37 tattoos by now. Another bonus: I am still enjoying quite the honeymoon period, when your pancreas is still waffling over whether it wants to settle down and take on the family business or run off to San Francisco to start a Peruvian pan flute band, and so I have a sizeable margin of error for keeping things on an even keel. And did I mention the part where I have the best, smartest, most patient, most stable, and handsomest husband I could dream of?
The one real negative in all of this is that it came at a very bad time for me, food-issues wise. I had been attending Overeaters Anonymous to try and deal with my bingeing habits, and I make no comment on the 12-step method in general, but it had been growing into more of a stressor than a help for a few months, and I ended up in the ER with jacked-up vision about a week into a relapse of full-on bingeing and purging. (I have no doubt that without this relapse, which created the perfect storm of conditions, I would have continued undiagnosed for AGES, so it's lucky in its own way.) And boy howdy, did this diagnosis hit every single food-related fear I had. Cue a month of very disordered habits, culminating in a day where I behaved so dangerously that I am still too ashamed to talk about it, followed by a month of getting my shit together and my sugars under control (yay!) while stressing basically nonstop about food (boo!)
Things continue to look up. My therapist, despite (or, if I am being honest, thanks to) his bag of "make you look and feel like an idiot" exercises, has provided a lot of help. A woman at church whose son is diabetic invited us over for dinner sometime.
Anyway, I wanted to mention this for a couple reasons. First, because it is a thing happening in my life, so I should talk about it. I've been very reticent in sharing it with anyone; I'm not sure why. I actually haven't even told my parents yet. Maybe I'm subconsciously hoping it will go away if I don't announce it. In the immortal words of Andy Stitzer, "Well, shit, man, fuck it." I CAN HAZ DIABEETUS. And because of that, and because I am almost 28 and Jesus I am tired of spending all my mental energy on this noise, I am ready to walk away from my food obsessions and convictions, my compulsions and behaviors, the whole comforting, familiar, exhausting rat's nest of it. I am ready to learn how to be sane about food. I am not totally sure what that is supposed to look like, nor what the process to get me there will be, but I am prepared to figure it out.
So to that end, this LJ is probably going to turn into mainly a food diary for awhile, just so you know.
Umm also why has the market not produced this method of blood glucose testing, as a consumer I protest